


I Was a Teenage Troll

by Archaeopter-ace (QuarticMoose)



Series: I Was a Teenage Troll [1]
Category: Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons)
Genre: (if you think i should change it lmk), Alternate Universe, Apologies for writing a Barbmura fic that is mostly a conversation between Nomura and Jim, Established Relationship, Family Feels, Femslash, Gen, Really not my strong suit, So much so that I'm labeling this gen, Trans Character, Writing romance is just, because I don't think it reaches the threshold of being a shipping fic, inspired by the 1985 Teen Wolf movie with Michael J Fox, it's a side-effect, jim drools a lot, though it does have a ship in it, troll!barbara, troll!jim, troll!nomura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27460189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuarticMoose/pseuds/Archaeopter-ace
Summary: Barbara really, really should have told Jim that she was a troll and that it was hereditarybeforehis first transformation began. With any luck, her girlfriend can help her sort out this mess
Relationships: Barbara Lake & Jim Lake Jr., Barbara Lake/Nomura, Jim Lake Jr. & Nomura (Tales of Arcadia)
Series: I Was a Teenage Troll [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048162
Comments: 13
Kudos: 55





	I Was a Teenage Troll

**Author's Note:**

> About this AU: Being a troll is like being a werewolf, only instead of your transformation being tied to the phases of the moon, it’s tied to the proximity of the planet Mercury (because ‘mercurial,’ and there is no planet named for Janus) So, every 116 days you're forced to transform into a troll, yay (the rest of the time, you have a choice)
> 
> This was inspired by the 1985 Teen Wolf movie. In it, Scott’s dad’s reasoning for not telling him about being a werewolf sooner was _extremely_ thin. Even in this AU, I think realistically Barbara _would_ have told Jim much sooner, but then we wouldn’t get any hijinks, so...
> 
> Oh, and since Barbara is trans in this one, there is no James Lake Sr. The role of deadbeat parent will instead be played by someone named Liz, but she’s not important. 
> 
> And Nomura prefers to go by her surname, so she’s just Nomura here.
> 
> On with the show!

The doorbell rang.

Barbara set down her tea and padded over to the door to let her girlfriend in. Like Barbara, Nomura was dressed in a loose-fitting shirt a size or two too big, and extra-stretchy yoga pants; she had a duffle bag slung over one shoulder.

“Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?” Barbara greeted her with a quick kiss.

“There’s like an hour until conjunction, quit worrying.” She toed off her shoes and stepped into a pair of house scuffs waiting by the door. Carelessly, she dropped her duffle bag by the stairs to be brought up later.

“Tea?” Barbara offered. There was still enough left in the pot for another cup.

Her girlfriend made a face Barbara was all too used to, where her food preparation skills were concerned. “Ah. No, thank you. I’m fine. Maybe later.” 

“Right, right.” Barbara turned her mug around and around between her hands. Abruptly, she chugged what was left and set it down. “I’m going to lock up and check the windows - can you get the ones in the back?”

Nomura gave her a quizzical look, but nodded acquiescence. “Sure… Hey, is everything - ”

“Thanks.” Barbara cut her off, and went to make sure the front door was locked and deadbolted and the curtains drawn tight. This would be the first time she shared troll-tide with her new girlfriend, but that wasn’t what had her feeling so anxious. She couldn’t help but glance up the stairs, where the root cause of her worry was currently brooding in his room, refusing to come out.

“All clear back here,” Nomura called. 

“Here, too.” With the knowledge that it was safe to do so, Barbara shifted into troll form, Nomura following suit a moment later. It was always better to do it on one’s own terms, than to be dragged into it by a planet almost fifty million miles away. 

Barbara took a moment to admire the sharp edges of her girlfriend’s form, the lustre of her pink agate skin. Barbara was a full head taller than Nomura like this - the perfect height for resting her chin on her girlfriend’s head. So she did, drawing her into an embrace and breathing in the floral scent of her shampoo with her more sensitive troll nose. 

“Barb, seriously, what’s wrong?” 

“I’m worried about Jim,” she admitted. “He’s up in his room. He still refuses to talk to me, ever since I told him, showed him, hours ago. I’m at my wit’s end!”

“To be fair, you _did_ spring all this on him at the very last possible minute. I know you had your reasons,” she hastened to add, “But I can sympathize with him.”

“Do you think - Can you try talking to him? I'm worried that he doesn't know everything he needs to about what's about to happen.”

“You know I don’t do touchy-feely stuff.” Nomura shifted uncomfortably, nearly pulling away. 

“He won’t listen to me. If you could just convince him to come out, I’ll handle the rest. Pleeaase?” Barbara started to nibble on her ear. Nomura grunted, but was unmoved. Barbara shifted from nibbling to straight-up chewing, and didn’t stop until her girlfriend gave in.

“Alright, alright! I’ll try to get through to him. But don’t hold your breath. He barely even knows me.”

Barbara slumped with relief. _“Thank you,”_ she said, fervently. “Thank you so much.”

“I haven’t done it yet,” Nomura reminded her. “But I’ll give it my best shot.”

* * *

Nomura knocked on Jim’s door, and got a “Go away!” for her trouble. She’d always been one to disregard closed doors when it suited her, though, so with a mental shrug she barged in anyway. 

Jim was sitting in a miserable lump on his bed. He was still almost entirely human-looking, though he did have two tusks sticking up from his lower jaw; he evidently hadn’t figured out how to handle them yet as there was a line of drool at the corner of his mouth. When he saw her he sucked in a sharp breath. 

“Who’re you?”

“The Easter Bunny,” she deadpanned. Jim continued to not recognize her. She rolled her eyes. “It’s me, Nomura.” 

“Oh, right.” His claws poked new holes in the already-abused hem of his sleeve as he worried it with his fingers. “Mom said you were a troll, too.”

“Look, first things first. I’ve only got - ” she checked her watch, “- forty-three minutes to make alternate arrangements, so if you don’t want to share your house with me for the next three days, you need to tell me _now.”_

She got a scowl and a glare for her trouble, but no definitive answer. Sighing, she tried to soften her tone. “I get that this is a lot to process. And because you’re mad at your mom, your opinion of me might not be so rosy at the moment. That’s fine. All I ask is that you give me an honest assessment of whether or not you can handle me being here until troll-tide is over, because once Mercury gets close enough, none of us are getting out of here until it passes.”

Jim worried his lip, causing a second line of drool to dribble down from the opposite corner. Charming. “You can stay,” he said at last. “After all, _you’re_ not the one who lied to me for fifteen years.”

“Thanks.” She meant it sincerely. “Can I sit down?” She gestured to his desk chair but waited for his response. See, she could do manners if she had to.

“Mom put you up to this,” he accused, dodging her question. 

“Well, yeah. I thought that was obvious - no offense, but this isn’t the sort of heart-to-heart I’d volunteer for.”

“Then by all means, you don’t have to stay on my account.” He gestured to the open door. Ah, teenage snark. Why was she doing this again?

Jim tried unsuccessfully to wipe away the drool on his chin, crumpling further into a miserable ball. Oh, right. She was doing this because Jim needed help.

She crouched down so at least she wasn’t looming over him anymore. “Listen, I don’t want to get in the middle of a fight between you and your mom. You’d assume I’d always take her side - we haven’t known each other that long, you have no reason to think otherwise. If I got involved, it’d be two-on-one and that wouldn’t be fair. I want to stay out of it. But. There’s things you need to learn, and not a lot of time left to learn them.

“Someone needs to explain to you properly about being a troll. It can be your mom, or it can be me, but it has to be one of us. We’re all you’ve got; it sucks, but that’s the way it is. So choose.”

Jim looked at her balefully, before rolling his eyes and indicating she could sit down. “Fine, I guess. Don’t know what more there is to it; turn into a troll, stay indoors for three days, go back to being human and pretending this never happened.” He undermined his argument by scratching furiously at his scalp with a ruler - at least he had the good sense not to try that with his new claws. _“Why is my head so itchy.”_

“Horns.” She raised a pointed eyebrow. “Want to know how to make the itching stop?”

“ _You_ don’t have horns.” He swapped out the ruler for a capped ballpoint pen, _scratch scratch scratch._

“Your mom does,” she countered. “Trolls are variable. First time your horns grow in, saliva works best to soothe the skin, believe it or not. Some kind of enzyme, I don’t know.” She jabbed a finger at him. “Use your own - I’m not gonna do it for you.” In troll families, it was normal for parents to look after their kids through their first transformation, and yes, that included tongue-baths, but she and Jim did not have that sort of relationship.

Luckily, he was desperate enough to listen to her and give it a try (and still slobbery enough around his tusks that collecting some saliva on his sleeve and spreading it around was no trouble) “Huh. That does feel better. Thanks,” he added grudgingly. 

She eyed the time on the clock beside his bed. Not a lot of time left - she’d have to prioritize; the drooling issue could wait. “You're going to want to change your shirt. Chances are that one won't fit you anymore in another thirty minutes.”

“What?”

“Your… hang on, I can figure it out. Your mom’s cousin is your second cousin, right? Your second cousin Draal is wider than he is tall, in the _shoulders_. Then again, he was born a troll… but still.”

"What does that mean? ‘Born a troll’?"

“Did you let your mom explain _anything_ to you?”

Mutely, Jim shook his head. 

“Can I explain while you find something else to wear? You _really_ don’t have a lot of time, and apparently we have a lot of ground to cover.”

Jim nodded, grimly determined, and went to his dresser and started shifting through his shirts. 

“Stretchy pants, too, while you’re at it,” she directed. “Right, so, we trolls have a troll form and human form, right? And we usually have voluntary control over our shape, except for the three days when Mercury is closest to Earth. Some of us choose to live human lives on the Surface, and some choose to live as trolls full-time in Trollmarket - that’s the nearest underground city. You with me so far? No, nothing with long sleeves, you don’t know how big your arms will be. Do you have any tank tops?

“I said before that troll forms are variable. Some are even moreso. Like, your mom and I, we might look… strange, to you, but we’re still pretty human-shaped. Five fingers, two eyes, one nose. Taller than our human selves, but not by much, and, just,” she waved a hand, “generally human proportions.”

Jim managed to unearth a large t-shirt liberally splattered with paint. “I don’t wear this unless I’m doing something that might leave stains. We could cut the sleeves off?”

“Eh, yeah, should work. Right, so, your mom and I - and you, as well - were born on the Surface, while human-shaped. But Draal was born in Trollmarket to a mother who was troll-shaped at the time. Actually, pretty sure she spends all her time as a troll, your uncle too - anyway. Draal is a little less… human-looking in his proportions, yeah? Really wide, spiky shoulders. A ridiculous crown of horns instead of hair. Stupid-looking face.”

“Do you… not like him?”

Nomura winced. She’d gotten a little carried away. “He’s my ex,” she admitted. “His parents, your great-uncle Kanjigar in particular, kept trying to play matchmaker and set us up, and eventually we agreed to give it a shot. The break-up was messy, but Draal’s really not so bad.”

“Uncle Kanjigar. _Cousin Draal_.” Jim balled up the shirt in his fists. “I have all this family that I never even knew about! She lied to me my whole life - and don’t say it was a lie of omission, that’s a load of crap! You know what she told me? When I asked why she never said anything? ‘Sometimes it skips a generation.’ I mean come on! She could have still told me that _she_ was a troll, even if I wasn’t, instead of going away to fake conferences several times a year!”

Jim kicked his bookcase, sending a model rocket clattering to the floor. He growled, his eyes flashing yellow - which was normal enough for a troll, but Nomura didn’t like how heavily he was panting, how flushed his face was as he paced. This close to his transformation, his heart would be sensitive to stressors, and it would be all-too easy to kick off a panic attack. 

“Yeah, she shouldn’t have done that.”

Startled by her concession when he’d clearly been expecting her to defend Barb, he stumbled to a halt and blinked up at her.

She elaborated, “I agree with you, but there’s more to the story. I know your mom wouldn’t want me to tell you, but... you deserve answers. The explanation might take a while, though, and time is not on our side, so you should get changed now - I’ll just step out for a moment, okay?”

“And then you’ll tell me?”

“And then I’ll tell you. Just… we should probably go over some breathing exercises, first.”

“Oh, come on!”

“I’m serious,” she snapped. “Your heart rate is _going_ to spike, when the change comes. Your muscles can lock up if you try to resist - and it’s a reflex to resist when you’ve never felt anything like it before. Going over breathing exercises is the bare minimum of preparation you could do.”

Grumbling, Jim waved her out of the room, and she went. She could hear scissors working to modify the shirt, and after that it didn’t take Jim long at all to get ready. “Okay, you can come back in.”

She spun the desk chair around so she could sit on it backwards. Jim took a seat on his bed, looking at her expectantly.

“Breathing first, remember. This first one is very basic: in through your nose for a count of five, hold for five, exhale for five.” 

Jim did follow along as Nomura led him through several different exercises; switching to ‘in through the mouth, out through the nose’ did wonders for managing Jim’s drool situation.

“I don’t sugar-coat things. This is not going to be pleasant to hear - last chance to back out?”

Jim nodded with steely-eyed determination. “Tell me.”

“I figured you’d say that. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Okay, here goes: your mom didn’t tell you because she didn’t want you to blame yourself for your other mother leaving. Because Liz left when she found out you could also be a troll. But that’s on _her_ , not you.” Nomura hoped she did enough to direct the blame where it rightfully belonged.

“W-what?”

“My understanding is that your mom told her she was a troll once they got really serious, so Liz can’t say she didn’t know what she was getting into. Liz definitely knew about trolls by the time they were planning on having you, and yet somehow she thought it wouldn’t affect you. Maybe she thought it was a recessive gene, maybe there was a miscommunication, I don’t know. 

“What I do know is that when you turned five, Barb raised the question of when to tell you about trolls. She thought you might be old enough to keep the secret, now, and not blab to your entire preschool. Liz was surprised to learn you might yet be a troll, even though it should have been abundantly clear that it was possible, and also, if she really loved Barb for all she is then it shouldn’t have _mattered_. But I guess she decided she wasn’t cool with trolls after all, and then she - ”

“And then she walked out.”

“Yeah.” Nomura shifted, the plastic chair creaking. “Can you give me some indication of how your heart is doing? Because if it’s even a little fast then we should really revisit those breathing exercises.”

Jim took an exaggerated breath, rolling his eyes as he did so. His brief amusement soon faded, and he fidgeted, picking at his blanket. “I get why she would want to keep that from me. But… Mom could have still told me about trolls without getting into all that. That’s even what she did tonight! She could have told me so much sooner!”

“You’d have to ask her. I’ve told you all I know.”

They sat in silence for several moments as Jim processed what he’d learned. Nomura allowed him as much time as she could, but she still needed to finish briefing Jim on what to expect. Or persuade Jim to leave his room so Barb could brief him, as per the original plan, but Nomura wouldn’t bet on those odds.

“We’ve got less than ten minutes... I know you mom is worried about you. Do you want to see her before you change? She could explain what’s going to happen next.”

Jim shook his head, then winced at the motion - yeah, by this time his headache would be ramping up something fierce. “Later. I’ll talk to her later. Just… just need a little bit more time, first.”

“Okay.” Nomura tangled her own fingers together, restless. She hadn’t prepared for this, hadn’t expected to be put in the position of Explaining Trolldom to Her Girlfriend’s Kid when she got up this morning. “So, as you’ve seen, trolls are creatures of living stone. I… don’t actually know how to explain what that feels like. It, uh… well, anyway. Stay out of sunlight, it’s deadly.”

“Like for vampires?”

“No - well, a bit. Less catching-on-fire, more turning-you-into- _un_ living-stone. The effect is painful but not instantly lethal; you have time to withdraw if you’re quick.”

Nomura drummed her fingers against her knee, thinking. “You won’t know your own strength at first. Ever see one of those superhero movies where the guy just starts flailing around, stumbling into things and accidentally breaking them? Yeah, that happens to new trolls if they don’t mind their strength.”

“So what do I do?”

“If you treat everything as though it’s made of eggshells, at least until you get a handle on things, then you’ll be fine. Oh, speaking of eggshells - your sense of taste as a troll will be _very_ different. Just follow our lead if you’re not sure what you should be eating. Your other senses aren’t too different, though your hearing will - ”

Jim abruptly stiffened. Nomura looked at the time and swore. “Remember to breathe!” she urged, as Jim bent double and his hands fisted on his sheets.

He panted, wide-eyed as he looked to Nomura, his pupils narrowed to slits. A shudder rolled through him and he grimaced, grinding his teeth together. Nomura reached out her hand and he grabbed it like a lifeline; if she were in human form, she’d probably have broken fingers from how tightly he was squeezing. 

The shift to stone skin was the most gradual part of the transformation, Jim turning incrementally more blue until he was the color of the sky at twilight. The rest of his transformation wasn’t anywhere near as smooth; horns violently punched through the top of his head and grew into two curving points, backswept like his mom’s; bones audibly shifted as he gained height and width and his jaw widened. 

Jim groaned as his transformation progressed, but he did manage to continue to breathe through it. Nomura found herself murmuring a litany of reassurances, platitudes that insisted he was doing great and it would be over soon.

And it was. In less than a minute it was done, and Jim was left shivering and shaky on his bed, a new adolescent troll. 

“There you are,” she said softly. On impulse, she reached up and swept his sweaty bangs off his forehead.

Jim blinked up at her briefly but then refocused on his hands. He unclenched them one finger at a time, then held them in front of him, flexing them and staring. Nomura remembered what that was like.

“Weird,” he croaked out, his voice hoarse. His brow furrowed, and he worked his jaw a bit, acclimating. One hand reached up to the top of his head - it jerked back at first contact with his horn, before he pushed it forward and grabbed on. She could see from the way the tendons flexed on his hand that he was testing its give (spoiler: there wasn’t any, but he could figure that out for himself).

“You want to go look in a mirror?”

He glanced at her, then looked past her at the door. “Is Mom waiting right outside?”

“No, she’s still downstairs. You’ve got a straight shot to the bathroom.”

Needing no further prompting, Jim bolted out the door.

* * *

Three days, Jim reminded himself as he stared at his face. He only needed to put up with this for three days, and then he’d turn back into a human.

He still could barely believe this was even _possible_. How could someone just transform like this? But the proof was right in front of him, as it had been when he got home from school, when his mom had come to him and admitted she’d been keeping secrets from him. 

In hindsight, he could see that she had been nervous and uncertain how to begin. After all, when she’d told him at breakfast that her conference in Boston had been cancelled, she must have already decided to not hide from him this time - and she wouldn’t have known, then, that Jim _had_ inherited the trollism from her after all. Like she said, sometimes it skips a generation, and she wouldn’t have known that things would be different for him this time around.

He wondered about that. Was it just luck that she’d cancelled whatever plans she had to make herself scarce this time, or were there signs that she had picked up on? Jim had started to notice things going weird for him in gym class, when running laps didn’t wind him the way it usually did but the sun was unbearably bright. Or when he was the only one in class who could hear someone’s bass-boosted car stereo thumping out beats during an algebra quiz. And then there was that time in the cafeteria, where he could have sworn he felt his ears turn pointy for just a brief moment, which he’d been able to dismiss as his imagination, but were now his reality.

He felt his anger (his _hurt_ ) begin to simmer again. Most likely, his mom _had_ noticed something that Jim hadn’t this morning, that made her think maybe he was a troll like her after all, but she _didn’t say anything._ Didn’t give him any warning at all, until he got home from school and she said ‘we need to talk,’ and then she talked a bunch of impossible nonsense before _turning into a troll_ , and oh god it hadn’t been nonsense after all.

Turning on the faucet, he splashed some cool water on his face. His stoney skin barely felt it, but it did its job; he felt marginally better. 

He remembered his mom’s red-rimmed eyes, her hunched shoulders, the way her voice broke as she apologized, again and again. Then, later, his mom, standing outside his door, pleading for forgiveness, for a chance to explain. 

Talking about Liz was always a thorny topic in their house, best avoided. He could see how, if it had happened the way Nomura had said, his mom would have hesitated to tell him anything, at least while he was little. Even if she didn’t bring up Liz’s abandonment in her explanation of trolls, young Jim would have made the connection himself; there was that period, right after it happened, where he’d constantly wondered what he’d done wrong to drive her away. It had taken his mom a lot of work and love and patience to make him see sense, and make him understand that it wasn’t his fault. 

Little Jim wouldn’t have understood. Where, then, was the line, the pivot point after which he would have been old enough? How would his mom know how to recognize it?

He wouldn’t say he was happy with her at the moment; couldn’t even say he’d forgiven her - yet. Truthfully, he found it difficult to stay angry at her for any prolonged period of time. It was exhausting, and tonight had been An Ordeal, to put it lightly, and could he maybe just process one thing at a time?

Jim left his reflection behind and moved to the top of the stairs. His feet felt weighed down by lead, but he suspected that didn’t have anything to do with being a troll. He reached for the bannister but stopped, reconsidering - ‘everything is eggshells.’ Gingerly, he put one foot on the top step and shifted his weight onto it slowly. It creaked louder than usual, alerting his mom.

“Jim?”

He stayed where he was, torn between the impulse to rush to her, or to turn tail and dash back into his room. She appeared at the bottom of the stairs, looking the same as she had before: seafoam blue skin, two horns adding extra height to her now-seven-foot tall frame, ivory claws on her fingers and toes. Pointy ears poked through her still-auburn hair, pulled into a low ponytail.

"Oh my beautiful boy. Just look at you." She put one hand up her mouth as her yellow eyes got suspiciously shiny.

He shuffled down the stairs one timid step at a time. He was definitely heavier than he was used to, but it wasn't as difficult to move as he'd feared being living stone would be. When he got to the bottom, his mom twitched like she wanted to reach out to him but held herself back, so Jim stepped forward and tucked himself into her arms. This close, he could hear his mom’s heartbeat as though it were his own. 

“I’m so sor-”

Jim pulled back to look up at her. “Can we just, table that for the moment? And deal with being trolls right now? I’m still figuring out how to feel about… everything, and what you did, but… I don’t want to be by myself right now.”

“Whatever you want.” Taking his face in both hands, she gently knocked their foreheads together. 

“Aww,” Nomura cooed from behind him.

Jim turned, startled; he’d forgotten she was there. From the startled expression on her own face, it looked like Nomura hadn’t meant to draw attention to herself. “I’ll, uh, just give you two some time.” She made herself scarce.

His mom took one of his hands in her own. “How was - Did you - ”

“Ms Nomura did a good job explaining, I guess. Changing was the strangest thing to ever happen to me, but it wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t _pleasant_ , but. Not as bad as I thought it’d be?” He glanced back to where Nomura had disappeared. “She… she’s good people. I think I like her.”

His mom positively beamed; it surprised him how easy it still was to read her expressions, even like this. “I’m so, so happy to hear that.” She pulled him in for another quick hug, then held him at arms length. “Come on, I have something for you.”

She steered him to sit on the couch, then passed him a round object wrapped in oilcloth that had been sitting on the table. He unfolded the protective layers to reveal a metal disc, about the size of a saucer. The face of it, some iridescent blue stone, had lines and arcs inscribed on it. There were two metal arms like clock hands bisecting it, along with several loops of metal, with markings around the edge, and a metal ring at what he guessed was the top - possibly to hang it?

“It’s an astrolabe. It has many uses, but notably it can be used to calculate the position of the planets. Before the internet and apps made it so easy, this is how we’d predict when the next troll-tide would be.” She reached out to tap it with one claw. “This astrolabe has been passed down in our family for over two hundred years.”

“Two hundred years?!” Jim gingerly set it back down on top of its cloth.

She chuckled. “Treat it with care, but don’t be afraid to handle it. It’s a tool; it’d be a good idea to learn how to read it, even if you never end up needing to use it. Better safe than sorry.”

Jim picked it up again. He turned it back and forth so it caught the light and seemed to shine; the craftsmanship was beautiful. “Wow.”

Nomura chose that moment to poke her head back into the room. “Did you tell him about our plans, yet?”

“No, not yet.” His mom turned back to him, a wry smile on her lips. “Since we’ll be stuck inside for the next three days, Nomura and I decided to do a Wagner marathon; you’re welcome to join us.”

Nomura scowled, stalking into the living room and perching on the armchair like a gargoyle. “Marathons are for tv shows and movies. Wagner’s Ring Cycle is an _opera._ And what’s more, it’s _one_ opera. You can’t marathon one thing.”

“It’s fifteen hours long,” his mom countered, but she was smiling, so Jim guessed she was looking forward to it. He wished he could say the same.

“Uh, thanks, but… I think I’ll… do something else.” _Anything_ else.

His mom’s grin turned sheepish. “Ah, right. Well, we won’t be watching all the time - just one part a day, there’s four in the series; and it _is_ performed as a series, not one long continuous opera, ‘Mura, stop giving me that look - so that leaves plenty of time for the three of us to do something else together. Maybe a board game?”

“Yeah, sounds fun.”

Nomura’s eyes lit up (surprisingly literally). “Barb - you should show him how to cook!”

Jim quite frankly did not know how to respond to that. He was ninety percent sure Nomura already knew that he was the better cook, that it was in fact something he was passionate about, but something about her positively gleeful grin and the way his mom rolled her eyes told him there was some context he was missing. 

“I don’t do it on purpose!” his mom argued. “It just comes out that way.”

“Hey, I’m not arguing with the results, however you get there.”

“Um.” Jim raised his hand, before he realized what he’d done and sheepishly lowered it. “What’s going on?”

“Kid, you know how everything your mom cooks looks better than it tastes, and that’s not saying much?”

Jim wanted to rise to his mom’s defense, but her cooking skills were pretty indefensible. One time, she somehow managed to add too much baking soda to a tuna salad, despite the correct amount of baking soda being none at all. 

He tried to keep his expression neutral, but Nomura saw through him. “Exactly. But like I said, being a troll messes with your sense of taste something fierce; you are in for a treat.”

* * *

Hours later, long after the last of her oatmeal-raisin cookies had been devoured, Barbara found herself sitting on couch with the two most important people in her life; Jim had fallen asleep against one shoulder, while Nomura was snuggled up against her other side, sipping the tea Barbara had made and humming appreciatively. Barbara couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so happy.

“Your son is drooling on you,” Nomura murmured in her ear. And yes, Barbara had become quite aware of the situation when her shoulder began to feel a bit damp, but you couldn’t pay her enough to wake him at this point.

“He can’t help it.” She smiled fondly down at him. Her son was a troll! It made her giddy to think that he was just like her. No more lying, no more sneaking around. She had a long way to go to repair the trust she’d broken between them, but she was hopeful that they would get through it. 

“When are you going to show him Trollmarket?”

Trollmarket was... kind of a lot to take in at first. “I'll leave that up to him. He still needs to figure out how to change on his own first, and that could take a while.” She pulled her attention away from her son to give her girlfriend a look. “I think he'd like for you to be there, too.”

“What? Really?”

“Is that so surprising?”

Nomura opened her mouth as if to say ‘yes absolutely,’ but hesitated. “I didn’t think he’d let me stay,” she confessed. “I was surprised that he was willing to hear me out. He’s… a good kid.”

“He said the same thing about you.”

She raised a sardonic brow, “That I’m a good kid?”

Barbara elbowed her. “You know what I meant.”

Apparently unwilling to concede the point, Nomura just hummed. They lapsed back into silence, listening to Jim’s soft snores as he slumbered on, oblivious to the world. Yes, Barbara was quite confident that everything would turn out alright.

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, Jim doesn't have super hearing, he's just better at picking up low frequency sounds (more meta on troll hearing [here](https://archaeopter-ace.tumblr.com/post/182408469965/troll-physiology-idea-that-began-with-something))
> 
> If I had more confidence in my ability to write a romance with actual plot, I would love to create a MLB-style love-square wherein human!Jim has a crush on human!Claire, but troll!Claire has a crush on troll!Jim. Alas, that will probably never be a fully-fledged fic, but I might write snippets for it - I have quite a few headcanons for this AU
> 
> Nomura has specifically the 2006 performance by the Royal Danish Opera on DVD, you know, the more feminist version told from Brünnhilde’s point of view, where Sieglinde pulls the sword out of the tree instead of Siegmund.
> 
> Props to the Islamic Golden Age (8th to 14th century AD) for developing the astrolabe, one of their many, many scientific innovations that advanced human civilization!


End file.
